Tissue papers have a wide use as toilet papers and paper towels in roll form, both for household and commercial uses. In households normally small rolls with a diameter of 100 to 150 mm are used, but the length of a paper roll then of course is limited, especially as the market trend is going towards more soft and bulky tissue paper.
In commercial use, in offices and in public washrooms etc, the handling cost of exchanging empty or near-empty rolls with fresh ones, or letting the user be disappointed at the lack of paper is of concern. This has led to tests with dispensers for rolls of paper that will last far longer.
These large rolls, often called jumbo rolls, can have a diameter of 200 to 350 mm and will thus carry a lot more paper. They will be correspondingly heavier than smaller rolls which weigh 0.1–0.2 kg, with a weight of from 0.2 to 2.0 or even 2.5 kg, and they can carry 1000 m of tissue paper.
Traditionally, rolled tissue papers have been rolled up on a core of cardboard to ascertain a hole in the middle which will allow the use of a central pin used in many dispensers. This core then has to be taken away and discarded when all the tissue paper from the roll has been used.
New market trends have introduced the coreless roll, where there is no cardboard roll around which the first windings has been started, but the roll has been produced on some type of mandrel so there is a hole, which often may have collapsed so that it has a deformed shape; it can be oval, flattened or star shaped. Normally the first windings are attached to each other by addition of some water to act like a core. All the paper can be used from such a roll, and no core has to be discarded.
WO 99/60909 teaches a method of holding a small coreless roll in a dispenser with plungers extending from the sides of the dispenser. The roll has to be prepared, preferably at the time of production, with depressions in each side, for the ends of the plungers to fit therein.
Some problems are known for cored and coreless rolls: the resulting hole can have an oval shape, or its diameter can vary with air moisture content, or the hole can become damaged at the edge, which problems can make it difficult to fit the roll in the dispenser, or the roll might wobble in the dispenser as paper is drawn from it.
A new trend is emerging with solid rolls, where even the innermost part is filled with paper and there is no hole, both for small rolls and for large jumbo rolls. This will for a given outer diameter result in more meters of paper on the roll. No central hole can be damaged, as there is none.
Special types of dispensers are needed to handle these types of rolls.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,082,664 teaches a method to hold small solid or coreless rolls in an adapter to be placed in a dispenser for cored rolls where short stubs or protrusions from the adapter are to be pressed into recesses (or divots) formed in the sides of the roll. These recesses should be formed at the time of production.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,161,795 shows a solid jumbo roll resting on two drive rolls. The tissue paper drawn from the jumbo roll is led through a channel formed by two belts driven by the force of the pulled tissue paper. This will also turn the jumbo roll and the drive rolls. At the end of the channel the belts form a nip which will cause the paper to be broken when pulled. All force needed to rotate the belts and the jumbo roll is actuated through the tissue paper. If the paper breaks just in the nip, there will be no easily pulled paper end to catch.
JP 10-167,432 teaches the use of an electrical motor to rotate a solid jumbo roll via a belt driving the periphery of a roll coupling a required distance to dispense a piece of paper. What the patentee here calls a jumbo roll really is a mother roll, but the teaching could be possible to use for a jumbo roll too.
The sheer size and weight of jumbo rolls make many standard dispenser solutions inappropriate. The roll needs to be installed alongside a wall. The weight of the roll necessitates a sturdy holding mechanism. The paper outlet most often needs to be placed at a low point of the dispenser. It is difficult to use a perforated tissue paper for jumbo rolls, as the perforation will lessen its strength.
There is a need for a simple and reliable method of installing and holding solid rolls in a dispenser, without complicated mechanisms. There is also a need for a dispenser for solid rolls which allows a simple and reliable method of operation. The need is more pronounced for larger and jumbo rolls.
These large rolls need to be protected from pilfering, so that an ill-advised user cannot take out a roll with a substantial amount of paper left on it.